The Map of the World's Dictators

The world may have lost two dictators when Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Mubarak stepped down this winter, but brutal, autocratic, and oppressive regimes still persist across the globe. CBS has put together a running feature about the World's Enduring Dictators that features this map, an interactive graphic on that site. As you can see above, the world's remaining dictatorships appear to be clustered in relative proximity to one another in Africa and the Middle East, with a few exceptions like Belarus in Eastern Europe and Myanmar and North Korea in Asia.

As with any map, there is room for debate over the criteria for inclusion. CBS includes this list of borderline rulers, who were considered for the map but didn't make it.

"Rulers and regimes teetering on the edge of absolute control were given the benefit of the doubt and left off the main list until they definitively prove their dictatorial bona fides", CBS explains. Totalitarian regimes that concentrate power more within a party or group than an individual like China are left off as well.